


Promises

by kat_elric



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: F/M, M/M, Spoilers, fill in all the plot holes!, we will make this better somehow...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 10:38:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9231161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kat_elric/pseuds/kat_elric
Summary: In a single moment his world changed forever. Yet Ignis had made more than one promise that he would have to keep, no matter what happened to him and against all odds, he was determined to do so.This contains a major spoiler (possibly more than one) so if you are not through Chapter 10 yet, please preceded with caution.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Yet again this is another case of me being unhappy with the game just dropping a bombshell on us, so I decided to fill in the holes. I hope everyone enjoys this as much as I do. I may end up writing more to it. We shall see.

Pain lanced through him, pain so strong that it was almost physical in nature. In all of his experience in combat and with all the scars he bore, he was no stranger to the physical pains battle could bring, but all of that paled in comparison to the internal pain he was experiencing now. Seeing Ignis laying there on that bed with bandages covering much of the upper portion of his face, was nearly more than he could bear. Machines hummed and beeped softly, keeping track of different pieces of his physicality. There were other places that were bandaged resting under the blankets, of that Gladio was certain, but none as impactful as the one around Ignis’s eyes. 

He stood, frozen just inside the door, until the rhythm in the steady breathing shifted signalling more alertness than he originally thought was present. “Gladio?” Ignis called out, his voice whisper quiet. 

“Yes,” Gladio croaked in response and then cleared his throat. It wouldn’t do to let his worry, his pain, show in his voice. “It’s me. Just coming to make sure you were still alive.” 

“I am,” Ignis needlessly confirmed, his voice seeming to take on strength until he sounded almost normal. “And Noctis?” 

“Alive. Unconscious but alive,” Gladio dutifully reported. “It seems like he exhausted his body with whatever happened. Prompto seems to think that somehow all of the Royal Arms were called to him and Noct was flying around with their power, but that is unconfirmed.” 

“It is entirely possible that what Prompto told you is accurate,” Ignis replied after a moment. “The Oracle was there with him at the time and her power is related to that of the Lucian Kings. I do not think it would be outside of the realm of possibilities for her to do that for Noctis.” He paused for another moment as if running the scenario over in his mind again. 

Gladio watched him, imagining the flicker of eyes behind glasses, the narrowing of a gaze that always showed the other man to be deep in thought. He felt his fingers curl into a fist until his nails dug into his palms. 

“What of Luna?” Ignis asked after a moment. 

It took Gladio a second to realize that he was the only one in the room to answer the question. “She is dead. Her body hasn’t been found yet, but given the magnitude of the disaster it is no surprise.” 

“I imagine a great number of bodies will not be found,” Ignis agreed. 

There was long period of silence before Gladio took a step hesitatingly towards the bed. “How are you? What did the doctor say?” 

Ignis released a sigh and shook his head slightly, “That it will take time.” 

“And your vision?” Gladio pressed. 

“Time,” Ignis replied firmly leaving no room for further discussion. There was something unreadable in his voice. 

“Alight,” Gladio agreed. He waited a minute or two more and when Ignis said nothing further, he forced himself to relax his clenched hands. “I’m going to go check on Noct again. I’ll let you know if anything changes.” 

“Do that,” Ignis agreed dismissively. 

Gladio spun and moved swiftly from the room, not seeing the young woman he almost knocked over in his desire to leave. Blindly he charged from the room and to the room he had been given to sleep in. It was only once inside that he let his anger and pain out in the sound of a terrible screaming roar. If anyone had heard his explosion, they never mentioned a thing about it, not even when the fist sized hole through the wall was discreetly patched the next day.

\---

It took three days before they would allow him to get out of bed. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Noctis was still unconscious, Ignis would have made more of an issue of it. As it was he let his displeasure at being forced into stillness show only to them that knew him the best, and besides Prompto’s frequent visits, those people were not around.

“I’m sorry if this pulls a little Sir,” the young nurse told him gently as she began to unwind the bandages from around his head. “Sometime a wound will ooze just enough that the bandages can stick more than intended.” 

He said nothing in reply as she continued to unwind the bandages from around his head and most importantly, his eyes. The bandage did pull on the healing skin as she carefully eased it away, but it was nothing that was unbearable. “There, now just lay back and relax keeping your eyes closed please. After being covered for so long they will need to adjust to light again so just relax. The doctor will be in a while to take a look at your eyes once they have had time to adjust.”

“Understood,” Ignis replied as he did as he was told. His fingers slowly curled in the blankets on his bed as anxiety settled heavily in the pit of his stomach. The doctor had yet to be able to tell him anything definitive, citing the fact that they simply slathered his eyes with healing paste and covered them to protect them the best that they could. There was no telling what would be hiding beneath lids that he knew would be scared forever. 

It seemed like an eternity of him warring with himself and nearly grabbing his cell phone. He knew the device well enough that he figured he could send a simple text to summon someone to his side. Every time he thought of it, he stopped himself. He was hardly a child and perfectly capable of accepting whatever was to come by himself. He did not need anyone to hold his hand, especially not Gladio who would react much worse than Ignis himself if the diagnosis was anything less than perfect. 

“Well, let’s see how you are doing today,” the doctor announced as he entered nearly thirty minutes later. “Go ahead and open your eyes. Take it easy and if you experience any pain, close them again.” 

Ignis nodded to show his understand and then slowly began to ease them open. It was a strange experience, forcing the simple muscles of his eyelids to work after being closed for so long. Something as easy to do as that should not pose as much problem as he was seemingly having. Despite his best efforts his eyes simply did not want to open. He was about to apologize to the doctor when it finally registered in his mind. It wasn’t that he couldn’t open his eyelids, because he could feel that he had, it was simply what he was seeing, absolutely nothing.

\---

That evening, Gladio was glad to see Ignis had moved from the bed and was sitting in the arm chair by the window looking out of it. “Iggy,” he breathed, a smile to his voice and something that had been held tense inside him slowly uncurled.

“Gladio,” Ignis greeted, turning away from the window to look at him. 

It was in that moment that Gladio realized his relaxation had been premature, for the Ignis wasn’t looking at him but in his general direction. He wasn’t a doctor, but if he had to hazard a guess, Gladio would have said Ignis would never be able to look at him again. Clenching his teeth, Gladio forced himself to look at the pink tissue of new scars slowly healing and the white film over the eyes he was so used to seeing filled with intelligence. 

“How is Noctis?” Ignis asked. If he realized the internal struggle that Gladio was going through, he made no indication. 

“The same,” Gladio answered automatically, as he tried to sort out his emotions. 

“Are they keeping him in a medically induced coma? Or is this one of his own making?” Ignis prompted. 

Gladio shook his head, unable to offer the man the answer that he wanted at the moment. He hadn’t allowed himself to imagine what it would be like if Ignis turned out to have lost his eyesight. He had no idea how the man would be able to function anymore. Besides the huge fact of combat, he wouldn’t have his eyesight for other things as well such as driving and cooking. It seemed like such a small thing until it was taken from one of them. Ignis wouldn’t be able to be with them anymore. 

“I’m so sorry,” Gladio told him, coming to stand behind him. His finger curled into the man’s shoulder unable to do anything more than that. “I wish I had the power to fix this.” 

“Do not,” Ignis growled angrily, “feel sorry for me. This is nothing comparatively and I will find a way to get by. I always do.” 

Gladio found that the only answer he had was a silent nod and a tightening of his fingers on Ignis’s shoulder that he hoped was properly understood.

\--- 

The gave him a cane and, at his request, a pair of dark glasses. He wasn’t particularly concerned about his appearence, but it wouldn’t do to give away to everyone that they encountered that he was blind at the moment. The first thing an enemy looks for is weakness.

It was strange to move around the place using a cane to keep himself from running face first into anything, even more difficult was the process of keeping himself schooled and controlled so as not to look as lost as he felt. Prompto tried to be helpful in showing him around, yet the third time he felt the young man try to take his arm and pull him along, he gave him a sharp rap on one of his shins for the effort. 

“Ow hey! Be careful where you swing that thing Ignis, you just hit me,” Prompto whined. 

“I am well aware of where I and my cane are. Next time it will not be so gentle. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to go out in the gardens for a while,” Ignis said firmly. He tugged his arm away and moved past the young man with a confident air he didn’t really feel. Ignis could imagine the stunned look of disbelief that Prompto’s face would carry. That alone made him smile.

\---

Surprised was the least of his feeling when he walked into the dining room and saw Ignis sitting at the table and eating his meal with Prompto and some of the other city officials. The man, wearing dark sunglasses and his typical suit, looked to be quite at home while sitting at the table. The only indication that anything had even remotely changed was the tilt of Ignis’s head towards the speaker, instead of his unwavering eye contact.

“Gladio, are you planning to block the doorway all evening, or were you going to join us for dinner?” Ignis called after a minute more. 

Sheepishly, Gladio moved forward, finishing his original path to the table. “How did you know?” he asked softly as he slid into the empty chair to Ignis’s right. Turning his head slightly Ignis offered him a secretive smile and then turned to answer someone down the table. Baffled, Gladio accepted the plate of food from the servant, and began eating his dinner without ever taking his eyes off of the man beside him.

\---

Thankfully, the magic that was his gift from his king, had not deserted him along with his eyesight. His blades still came at his call, twin daggers that were razor sharp and familiar in his hands. It took him a few minutes to get used to the patterns he used to do when he was working out, patterns that were, in small part, aided by sight. Still his muscles remembered the motions even if he could no longer see them and it didn’t take long for his body to fall back into them.

He had paced out the room before he had begun, one of the few empty rooms in the capitol building where Gladio had presumably had the furniture removed days ago for the purpose of having an inside location to keep in shape. His pacing had firmly fixed the shape of the room in his mind so that he wouldn’t need his cane to keep him from running into walls. 

Somewhere between his more complex patterns of attack and his contemplation of trying some flips, Ignis heard the door open. The heavy footfalls of a booted foot being firmly planted, always subconsciously ready to absorb impact, signalled Gladio’s entrance into the room. 

“What the hell are you doing?!” Gladio exclaimed racing forward and grabbing one of Ignis’s wrists. “You are going to cut your own arm off or worst!” 

“Typically,” Ignis replied coldly, “they tell people that they will put their own eyes out by accident, but that is not really a concern for me anymore is it?” 

“Iggy, you know what I mean. I know how sharp they are. You shouldn’t be playing around with them until your eyes heal,” Gladio told him, both his tone and his hand on Ignis’s wrist gentled. 

“Yes I suppose now that I have been using them for a half of an hour one of them could suddenly slip and I could slice my own gut open,” Ignis growled through clenched teeth as he opened his hands and allowed the magic to make his daggers disappear. As irritated as he was with Gladio at the moment, he still didn’t want to cut the man. Once they were gone he jerked his arm, pulling free of the stronger man’s grasp and moved back a few steps. 

“I’m sorry Iggy,” Gladio murmured. 

“If you tell me how sorry you are one more time, I will find a way to do permanent damage to you without killing you. I have always been very creative,” Ignis snarled. He was beyond finished with being treated like he was made from spun glass. 

“Ignis I-”

“Save it!” Ignis snapped. “I don’t want or need your pity. Of all the things I need from you, for you to be sorry is not one of them.” 

“What do you need Iggy?” Gladio immediately asked him. Ignis knew that Gladio had been struggling, uncertain on how to preceed or how to treat him. Since he had lost his eyesight a week ago, Gladio had been walking on eggshells around him and treating him as though he would break both physically and emotionally at any moment. The man was not, by any means, the slightest bit stupid, yet he had been so completely unsettled by the events that had happened that he clearly could not figure out what to do. 

“I need you to stop treating me as though I am different. Stop treating me as though I will break. I am still the same man Gladiolus. Treat me as such,” Ignis said firmly. 

There was a moment of silence before Gladio spoke, “Okay I can do that.” 

Ignis took a deep breath. This next request would be the hardest one yet, “and I need you to train with me using real blades.” 

“Hell no,” Gladio responded instantly. Ignis waited a moment, giving the other man time to think over the request instead of simply answering. “No Iggy, I’m not going to do that. You would get hurt.” 

“And when we have to face Magitek Soldiers, what will happen to me then?” Ignis asked, trying to hold onto the last shreds of his patience. 

“I sorry Iggy, but you won’t be facing them unless they invade here or the next location you live,” Gladio told him gently. 

Rage flashed through Ignis, hot and wild, rage that had built up over the last few days at his situation, at the state of the world, and at all of the things they had gone through already boiled up and lashed out at the man in front of him. “Fuck you,” he growled. “Fuck and your fucking ideas on how I will live my life. You do not get to decide Gladiolus Amicitia, what I will and will not do. I swore my life to my King and country and eyesight or not, I will do everything in my power to help him. I will not sit on the sidelines simply because I cannot fucking see. I am not cripple nor am I an invalid. I will continue to help Noctis with or without your blessing and if you do not like it, you can rot in hell.” 

“Over. My. Dead. Body,” Gladio growled out in response, the sound rough and coming through clenched teeth. 

“With pleasure,” Ignis snarled. Holding his hands out to the sides, he called to the magic that was his gift to command. Obediently his daggers appeared in his hands and as his fingers closed around them, he lunged towards the bigger man.

\---

Gladio understood, truly he did. Had he been in Ignis’s place, he would have stopped at nothing to help Noctis but the thought of losing the man as would assuredly happen, was simply too much to bear. Ignis lunged towards him, daggers bared and in as perfect of form as he always had. Side stepping, Gladio let the other man’s momentum carry him past. “I won’t fight you,” he said firmly.

“Then you will die,” Ignis replied, emotion draining from his voice. One of the man’s hands released the dagger, calling his spear to it and he swung out towards Gladio’s body. The swing was solid and with the power that he knew Ignis could put behind it, but it was high and he easily ducked beneath it. 

Suddenly it reversed, coming in much lower and retracting so that it would be the blade meeting his stomach. Quickly Gladio stepped forward, flexing his forearm and swinging out to deflect the wooden shaft away from him. “Even if you could see, you couldn’t kill me,” Gladio told him confidently. 

“Always so cocky,” Ignis growled, leaping backwards. The moment his feet touch the ground he threw the spear at Gladio. For a blind man, Ignis was startlingly accurate and Gladio just barely managed to step out of the way of it. A second later, Ignis was charging him, twin daggers whirling in one of his elaborate and confusing patterns. On instinct, Gladio summoned his sheild and used it to deflect the blades. 

The clang of metal meeting metal rang through the room and Gladio stared at Ignis over their weapons. With a grunt he shifted the shield, swinging it forward and forcing Ignis back. Somehow the blind man managed to not only keep his feet, but to also hurl one of the daggers with startling accuracy at Gladio’s unprotected stomach. He brought the shield down and the dagger clattered away. The moment it was deflected Ignis was back with the spear in hand. 

They had done this dance a number of times, Ignis’s sheer speed making up for what he lacked in strength. Training with two distinct styles that took all of their concentration to not be hurt or worse as they kept themselves in top shape. They had always been a match for each other, and what Ignis lacked in skill, he had made up for with his pure creativity and intelligence. 

This, however, was nothing like what they were used to. This was a desperate attempt of one man to show his continued worth to another who already believed him to be worth so much. Ignis wasn’t slow precisely, but he was certainly less accurate than he usually was, however it was matched in Gladio’s inability to go on the offensive against the blind man. 

Metal clashed together as Gladio caught the pair of daggers on his sheild once more. “You promised me you would do whatever I need, whenever I need!” Ignis panted, his chest heaving with exertion. 

Gladio remember the words he was referencing and the stolen moment in which they had occurred. Pressed skin to skin with the man, his heart overflowing with emotion that he couldn’t name that night, he had been ready to promise him the world, but this he couldn’t. Now if he wasn’t careful, Ignis would continue this futile battle until one or both of them was seriously hurt. 

With a grunt of effort, Gladio shoved backwards with his shield causing the man to move where he wanted him, and then bid the magic to make it disappear. He didn’t wait for it to be gone before he reached forward and grabbed a wrist with one hand, then drove his other fist into the man’s solar plexus. 

The breath whooshed out of Ignis lungs in a gust and he collapsed forward, letting his daggers go. Gladio caught him gently, supporting his weight and eased them both to the ground. “You promised,” Ignis whispered, his voice hoarse. 

“I know,” Gladio replied softly, holding him close. “I just can’t lose you. Not yet.” 

“We ran that risk everyday,” Ignis told him, clenching fingers in the other man’s shirt. 

“This is different. Ignis, you can’t see. Losing you is so much easier now,” Gladio whispered. 

“I’m still just as mortal as I was. Don’t you see? This is all I have. Noctis. Prompto. You. If I can’t come with you, be with you, then I am nothing. I am worse than dead,” Ignis tilted his head up and left Gladio to stare into unseeing eyes rimmed with tears. 

“Ignis,” he whispered, running a thumb along his cheek to brush away the wetness there. “You are everything to me, I just want to know you are safe.” 

“The world is taking a one way trip to hell, Gladio. If the pathetic existence that remains of my life can help to change that, then that is enough for me.” 

“Don’t say that.” 

“There isn’t anywhere that is safe in this world anymore and you know it. If I am to die, at least let me die in service of my king and by your side,” Ignis pleaded. 

Gladio clenched his eyes shut and sighed. Ignis was right and he knew it. He couldn’t stop the man from making his own choices no matter how much he wanted to. Despite his desire to keep the other man safe, the selfish part of him would rather have Ignis with him if they were to die. “Alright,” he agreed, tears making his throat close. “Alright.” 

“Thank you,” Ignis whispered. Leaning down, Gladio kissed him softly on the lips, swallowing the small gasp of surprise. 

“I’ll help you however I can,” he whispered as he pulled away enough that he could look at the other man’s face. The smile Ignis gave him was soft but full of so much gratitude it nearly made Gladio’s heart burst. 

“That’s all I ever need from you,” the blind man whispered. Then he laughed lightly, “maybe you can start with helping me make sure that I don’t look as though I have had a meltdown in here?” 

Gladio laughed warmly and kissed him on the forehead. “I think I can do that.”


End file.
